[Mrs. Don-o]

Consider this: the oldest consecration in the Church, historically, was the Order of Widows. As of a couple of years ago, there were orders of consecrated widows in France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Slovakia, not sure about the U.,S.

My thinking here, is that the members of an Order of Widows are widows And the members of an Order of Virgins, are virgins.

Doesn't that make sense?

And some religious orders include women of all sorts of backgrounds, such as the Daughters of Charity, which was founded by a widow, St. Elizabeth Seton.

My point is that there's room for a variety of different kinds of consecration. Any Catholic woman, no matter what her sexual or marital past, can be a consecrated woman.

But she can't be a consecrated widow if she's not a widow, and she can't be a consecrated virgin if she's not a virgin.

Those are just two specific niches. They don't comprise the whole of consecrated life. OK?

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Then this begs the question of what avenue of consecration someone like Mary Magdalene would enter, who was neither widowed nor physically a virgin.